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A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#141

Post by patrickyeon »

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #26
ahelwer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software seems to be doing okay, jobs-wise. The number of recruiters showing up in my inbox hasn't changed. I think health insurance is included in the severance.

It isn't, the generosity is allowing you to pick up COBRA

I haven't seen the details here, but I've been laid off twice in the last two years, in both cases when "the employer provided COBRA" they meant they are paying my COBRA premiums. This showed up as a cheque, on top of my severance pay, for the expected cost of COBRA premiums plus an appropriate amount to pay for the taxes on that payout.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#142

Post by jojo2333 »

mplewis wrote: post #72

I'm curious to know how many of these exits were in engineering – those with the privilege to know another engineering job is immediately available somewhere else – versus other roles in the company.

Quite possible this could blacklist you from many other companies.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#143

Post by AlexandrB »

sparkie wrote: post #111
dangus wrote: post #90

I can’t think of a worse way to handle this situation. Sure, I’m not sure what the answer is. Then again, I’m not a professional HR person who is supposed to be trained in handling these issues. Having 5% of your workforce quit over nothing more than messaging is a catastrophic failure in people management. Outright political speech bans at companies may be perfectly justified, but it’s usually the case that work env…

> I think the CEO’s refusal to take a stance on whether Black Lives Matter is a stance in itself. It’s hard not to assume that he doesn’t agree with the organization or the statement, even if that’s not the case. And while the movement is in some way political, in most ways the organization and the phrase simply stands for the idea that, well, Black Lives Matter. It’s simply a marginalized group seeking equal treatme…

> If BLM was just that, most people, even on the political right, would have no problems with it.

Let's get real. People on the political right have been yelling about kneeling in the NFL since that particular form of protest began. And it has few/none of the associations you describe.

> I'm a fan of racial equality, and by that I mean completely eliminating racism quotas, making hiring based purely on merit and not melanin.

Sounds great in theory. Now try to ascertain if someone made a hiring/promotion decision based on merit or on melanin without some kind of Star Trek era brain scan.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#144

Post by eli »

krzyk wrote: post #123

Is "apolitical" stance a bad thing? Isn't it the default, safe? I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (East Europe, Soviet Union), I always (naively?) thought that West countries were wiser. So I prefer companies to not mess with politics.

This has been discussed extensively in the previous threads on Coinbase, but banning the discussion of certain topics in the workplace is itself a political stance. Very much so.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#145

Post by Pfhreak »

krzyk wrote: post #123

Is "apolitical" stance a bad thing? Isn't it the default, safe? I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (East Europe, Soviet Union), I always (naively?) thought that West countries were wiser. So I prefer companies to not mess with politics.

"Apolitical" is the default. It's another way of saying, "The way things are is fine".

The problem is that this is, in itself, a political stance.

An example could be climate change. If Coinbase is doing nothing to make energy more green (even if that's just writing amicus briefs or blog posts), then they are effectively saying, "The way things are is fine."

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#146

Post by dgellow »

JPKab wrote: post #124

I feel like this confirms (although this could be confirmation bias, and would literally be a textbook case) my belief that this is indeed a tiny percentage of people at most tech companies that are really into social justice activism, and they are very, very noisy and disruptive. My suspicion is that the percentage of folks who are into this is higher at companies like Google, who have absurdly overly bureaucratic h…

> who have absurdly overly bureaucratic hiring pipelines that weed out free thinkers in favor of academic elites who are strong conformists

That’s just anecdotal but the people I know at google are the less conforming and the most “weird” (not in a pejorative sense) people I know. They also have no connection to academia and in fact all of them failed their studies for years because they were spending their time doing other crazy things.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#147

Post by syspec »

donatj wrote: post #73

Honest gut impression - they were probably dead weight anyway? Talking politics at work rather than, you know, getting work done. I've certainly worked with a number of the type.

Generally speaking, dead weight know they're dead weight / have an easy gig, and are the last people you would see taking such a deal because they usually prefer to keep coasting.

By definition most of them do not have strong principles (they're okay with mediocre work representing them), so i don't picture them leaving on principles

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#148

Post by ceilingcorner »

rocketpastsix wrote: post #83
donatj wrote: post #73

Honest gut impression - they were probably dead weight anyway? Talking politics at work rather than, you know, getting work done. I've certainly worked with a number of the type.

I highly doubt they walked in the door, spent 8 hours talking politics and collected their paychecks every month.

That seems to describe about 40% of Twitter users, so...it’s not implausible.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#149

Post by giancarlostoro »

dangus wrote: post #112
easton wrote: post #77

Of course, it's impossible to know now, but I wonder how many people would've still left if there was no exit package. It's possible some decided they wanted to work somewhere else and saw a way out.

I don’t know if they still do this, but I recall Zappos having a constant offer on the table to pay you to quit. I bet they didn’t have 5% turnover over some time-deaf email from the CEO. My guess: those 5% got sick of tone-dead all hands meetings/memos and saw their chance to bail out. I wonder what other companies during the Covid recession has 5% voluntary turnover?

My only question is what are employees proposing CoinBase takes a stance over? If you want something like cryptocurrencies to thrive you can't be overly policing them, that's not your job as a company.

Your job is not a political platform unless you work with politicians on their campaigns or are a politician / other form of politically affiliated / influenced company.

Politics can make people feel extremely uncomfortable especially if they feel suppressed and as a minority are bullied by other employees.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#150

Post by AlwaysRock »

I'm still shocked by the support over this policy. Having no stance on a topic is taking a stance on a topic. I'm surprised they didn't have more people leave. It's looks like from the article they have lost 5% so far and haven't finished talks with all employees.
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